


Thirty-seven Days

by tacosandflowers



Series: by the prospect of the touch, by the memory of the feel [3]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:00:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3590370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tacosandflowers/pseuds/tacosandflowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She laughs, because now that she’s said it, it sounds kind of silly. “You’re the first... lover I’ve ever had in this apartment, okay?”</p><p>A smile spreads across his face. “That’s fine with me,” he says. </p><p>“It’s not that I haven’t had people in my life,” she continues, and his smile vanishes. She chuckles indulgently at him and slides her hand down to interlace her fingers with his. “Don’t be jealous, you know you’re the only one for me now.”</p><p>aka: Clarke has Bellamy over to her apartment for the first time and things get real. A response to some reader requests / an epilogue to We Are Undone by Each Other / Undone: Companion Pieces, at least one of which you should probably read first if you want this to make any sense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thirty-seven Days

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaand here we are again, because as I've warned some of you, this universe has yet to let me go. This started as fluff and turned out frontloaded with angst because I can't stop with the angst and I should be sorry but I'm not sorry. They still have some stuff to work out, okay? So you get angst and fluff and sap and you mix it all together and it tastes like a Bellarke shipper's nightmares. All mistakes are mine because I'm an impatient mess. xoxo

It hits Clarke when she’s on the train from the airport. Summer is over. The real world is here, and she has to get back into it.

 

L’Arche has always been a refuge for her from the real world, ever since she first set foot there nearly ten years ago. It’s a world where nothing matters but the dig, where the harsh realities of the everything else in the world—in her life—can be put off until the end of the field season. And now the end is here, as it is every year, and she’s dealing with her transition back to the real world, like she does every year, and it sucks.

 

It always sucks.

 

She stares out the window of the train. It’s raining, of course, because it’s Vancouver, the water droplets streaming down the windows as the train makes its way over the Fraser River. The city lays ahead, tall glass condo buildings surrounded by regular houses, and her eyes flick between west, where she lives, and east, where Bellamy lives.

 

Her heart leaps as she thinks of him. She hasn’t seen him in nearly a week, which is the longest they’ve been apart since everything happened in July by the river, since things became real between them. She can still hardly believe it sometimes, where they are now compared to where they used to be. It seems insane, that years of knowing one another have shifted into what they now have. But then she looks at him or hears his voice, sees the way he looks at her, hears the way he speaks to her, and she feels it all over again, feels the fall that began for her long before she truly realized it was happening, and it makes more sense than anything else in the world.

 

So why is her stomach tied up in knots?

 

She sighs, allowing her head to rest against the glass. She’s so close to being home, and part of it is that she is never excited to get home at the end of the field season. Getting home means it’s really finished, she’s really back in the world of the city, of going to campus and working in her office and teaching in the labs and lecture halls that feel so foreign to her after months of being in the old farmhouse. She deals with it every year, and yet this time it’s different.

 

Because there’s always been a definitive line between the field season and the rest of the year, and she has her way of crossing it, she has her ways of dealing. And this time, she’s got someone else coming across the line with her—she’s bringing a full-on relationship with her—and she is finally allowing herself to feel the seriousness of what that means.

 

She pulls out her phone and finds a text from him.

 

_How’s the train?_

 

They’ve been texting since she landed, texting since they’ve been separated, really, because after a month of spending every day together at the site and every night together in her bed—ugh, she might as well admit that it was pretty much _their_ bed by the end, as most of his possessions had migrated into her cabin anyway and there was never a question of him sleeping anywhere else, it just made sense—being apart was something new.

 

Being apart has shaken her out of the new relationship haze, where everything was rosy (she doesn’t count the arguments they still have over lab space and site logistics), and jarred her back to reality, where she’s realizing that this relationship is also something that exists outside of L’Arche. It exists here, and they need to figure out what that means.

 

_Train is fine. Home soon._

 

She wonders where he is. He has lived in Vancouver for two years now, and she has only seen him once in the city, and had never allowed herself the space to think about what his life here would be like. She had shut that out for so long because it was just easier for her to do so. And she regrets it now, because her curiosity is all over the place. He’s had a full life here that she knows nothing about.

 

She gets off at her stop and pops her umbrella as she makes her way out into the rain, the smell of the wet coastal air hitting her once again. She’s lived in Vancouver ever since she started grad school, so for her it’s as much of a home as the place she grew up was. The thought of that home jars her back into something else, and she knows that’s contributing to her mood as well. She hasn’t seen Bellamy in a week because when they left L’Arche, he came straight back to Vancouver while she stopped in New York City for a few days to work with a colleague at Columbia and then made a stop in her home town to see her mother.

 

She did it out of duty and also because, even though her mother drives her crazy, even though they clash all the time, she does love her. And it had become something of a tradition for her to visit for a few days on the way back to Vancouver from L’Arche. So she’d gone back to _that_ home, which meant re-opening the can of worms that was her mother’s and Jaha’s request for her presence at the opening reception in a few weeks for the building that would be named after Wells.

 

She still hasn’t given them an answer.

 

She drags her suitcase into the lobby of her building and looks at her face in the elevator mirror, tired from a day of travel and tired from the thoughts swirling around. When she opens the door to her apartment she finds a note from the sub-letter on the table near the entrance, sees the colors and shapes of her small, solitary world in front of her, and all of the weirdness in her stomach pulls together in a tight knot of realization.

 

This is her space. Her very private space. Nobody comes here besides herself and a few select friends, and really, they don’t socialize here. Raven has a key for emergencies, but that’s it. But it’s about more than just people in general. It’s about her sex life. Clarke hadn’t been celibate in the years between Wells and Bellamy, but she had also never, _ever_ brought a lover back to her apartment before, because it was too intimate. It was a line she wasn’t willing to cross.

 

But now it’s different, because this thing with Bellamy isn’t just about sex.

 

She loves him more than she ever knew she could love someone, and that still terrifies her on a regular basis. He is very patient with her when it comes to this matter, which is one of the reasons she loves him so much—he gets that being open, that going against habits she’s built up over years of self-defense, isn’t easy for her, at all.

 

They’d joked about him being here, about her bed—everything from that day by the river is still crystal clear in her mind, and her heart swells again as she thinks about it—but she really hadn’t thought through the way this would actually go over the first time around.

 

She knows that her time of having a private space, blocked off from the world entirely, is over, because he is in her life now, and will be for a long time—the word _forever_ skates through her mind and gives her a shiver because she’s still getting used to the fact that he is here at all—and she has to give up this one last bastion of emotional isolation.

 

She is scared.

 

She walks into her bedroom and lets her suitcase fall onto the floor. Everything is neat and clean—she lucked out with this sub-letter—but she decides she wants to make the bed. It’s her ritual whenever she comes home after a trip, to put fresh sheets on the bed, because her bed is her safe haven, her place to sleep and dream and just be Clarke and nothing else.

 

She tears the old sheets off the mattress and allows some of her emotional turmoil to get released in the action, and once it is stripped bare she looks at it and has a sudden flash in her mind of him, here, in this space, and the jolt of love and fear courses through her again.

 

As if he can read her mind, her phone buzzes.

 

_Home yet?_

 

She pulls it out of her back pocket and types back.

 

_Just got here._

She stares at the bed again. Part of her wonders why she had refused his offer to meet her at the airport, why she had pushed, stubborn Clarke as always—“You’re busy on campus and I have my own routine for this already”—but she is also relieved that she has this time and space to wrap her head around a few things, and she loves him so much in that moment, for giving her that, for not being offended, for loving her still. If there is anything she has come to realize about Bellamy, it’s that he would do anything for her, give her anything, even at the cost of his own wants and needs.

 

Her phone buzzes again.

 

_Can I feed you later?_

 

She stares at the phone and then back at the bed again, knows that it is ready to be made, knows that it’s time, even if she’s still afraid. She turns back to her phone to respond.

 

_Can you bring me Indian food now?_

_Yes_ , he texts back immediately, adding a smiling emoji and a thumbs up. Bellamy uses more emojis than she would have expected, which she finds endearingly silly, and also unsurprising given that he was probably trained in the art of emoji by Octavia, who is a true master.

 

Clarke smiles and texts back.

 

_You know where to find me._

 

It’s time.

 

**

 

 _You know where to find me._  
  
Bellamy is standing when he receives the text from Clarke, has been standing since she asked him to bring her food, now, and he does know where to find her. He knows her address, he even knows her favorite Indian restaurant and the exact dish she wants. These are the kinds of things he's been filing away in his mind since they got together. It’s amazing, all of the things that he wants to know, after years of pretending like they didn't live in the same city. And they’re back in the city now, and this time they’re together.

 

This is big.  
  
The last month or so at L'Arche had been an absolute dream, in many ways. He'd gotten his dream woman, for one, and honestly he is still getting used to that fact, even though they’d spent the entire time when they weren’t working just basking in the joys of being together, finally, no holds barred.  
  
But basically cohabiting in a cabin in rural France for a month is one thing. Being in a relationship in the city where they both live and work is another thing altogether. They have busy work schedules on different campuses. They have apartments in different parts of town. They're going from working and being together all the time to... whatever this will be. He's not sure yet what form it will take.  
  
It's not that they avoided the subject altogether at L'Arche. They joked about it fairly regularly, in fact. They even have a wager on who can correctly guess the most book titles on the other's bookshelf because, well, they're nerds together, and it's funny.  
  
But they never had a real conversation about how things were going to be back in Vancouver. There wasn't time, with all the work of running the site, when a big chunk of their time together was spent problem-solving. And because truthfully, that conversation could really only be had once they were back here living it.  
  
He's been back for a week already, while Clarke made a few stops, and he has missed her like crazy. The first morning he woke up alone had particularly sucked. He knew he was being a big baby about it, but he loves her—he loves her so fucking much—and being apart from her for the first time after they finally found their way to each other was hard. He had allowed himself to mope a little bit, and scowled at Octavia when she teased him about it.  
  
He misses her and, truthfully, he is also worried for her, because her trip home had included a visit with her mother, and he knows, now, the full weight of what lies between Clarke and her mother. That had been a major breakthrough for him and Clarke this summer, when they finally talked about the intensity that is Clarke's past, the lingering hurt and pain and grief that still cause a sadness in her eyes sometimes that makes it hard for him to breathe.  
  
He'd asked her if she was okay with the visit, and she'd looked at him with her Independent Woman face and said, "This is how I've done it for years, I'll be fine." In fact, this had been her attitude in general towards the trip home. She didn't need him to pick her up at the airport because she's been doing that for years, too.  
  
She is a creature of habit, and as a long-time observer of Clarke Griffin, Bellamy knows the drill: disturb those habits at your own peril. The very fact that they were now together was, in a lot of ways, because he had finally pushed against her self-isolating habit and she had finally been ready to change her stance on letting him in. But this is an ongoing process, and he knows it. So he's not surprised she's resisting, slightly, even though it sends him into a mild panic. He needs to be patient, even when that patience means his own suffering.

 

It had taken a will of iron not to drive to the airport and surprise her.  
  
So he is thrilled when she asks him to come over, to bring her food _now_ , because a tiny, paranoid part of him wasn’t sure that she would even invite him over to her place at all.  
  
He's on the phone to the Indian place, suddenly scrambling around his apartment, wondering what he needs to bring. It was different when their cabins were next to each other. If he needed something, he just walked over and got it. But this is different. Clarke's place is at least a twenty minute drive from his, depending on traffic (so what if he'd Google mapped that weeks ago—he's a goner, that's not a secret anymore). So if he needs something—clothes, toothbrush—it's not as easy to get it.  
  
He thinks of Clarke, thinks of how if he's learned anything about her over the years, it's that she's unpredictable—he loves this about her, although in situations like this, it makes him extremely nervous. So he will not assume that she is going to ask him to spend the night. He stares at his toothbrush and wonders if bringing it along would jinx his chances, and then laughs at himself because really, Dr. Blake, _you believe in jinxes_? But he also knows that, if she does ask him to stay and he doesn't have his toothbrush, then he'll be cursing himself in the morning when his mouth tastes like a litterbox.  
  
Compromise. Relationships—and associated assumptions and jinxes—are all about compromise. And maybe a little contingency planning. He decides he'll bring his toothbrush and some clothes, but he'll leave them in his car.  
  
You're acting like a superstitions teenage girl, he thinks to himself. Being a lovesick idiot will do that.  
  
His phone chimes, a text from Octavia: _Pizza at Barbarella tonight?_

He thinks of O, knows that she’s craving their favourite pizza place tonight, knows she’ll have to be fine with a raincheck, and types on his phone.  


_Clarke's back. Heading over to her place now._  
  
Octavia responds right away with four more texts:

 

 _!!!_ __  
  


_You do know that nobody is allowed there like ever, right?_ __  
  


_Although I guess you're an exception because you're soulmates etc now_

_I want the full report on what her place is like ASAP_  
  
Bellamy sighs. Octavia was having a field day with him and Clarke being together. It was like they were a sporting event and she was the sideline analyst.

 

 _See you at lunch tomorrow,_ he texts her back, and puts his phone away, smiling as he thinks about the women in his life.

 

Forty-five minutes later, he pulls up to Clarke’s apartment building. She lives in one of the newer buildings on the street, which doesn’t surprise him. All he really knows about it is what she’s told him—“It’s fine, comfortable, close to work, nothing special,”—but now that he’s finally here, he can’t help but wonder how it’s going to be inside.

 

He finds a place to park and grabs the plastic bag with their food in it, taking a deep breath. He doesn’t want this to be a big deal, but he knows it is. Their first time really seeing each other in this city, their first day of being together in this place.

 

He enters the buzzer number and hears it ring, and suddenly her voice is coming through the intercom.

 

“Bellamy?”

 

“Hi,” he says, not sure what else to say. Why is he so nervous about seeing his girlfriend, who told him she loved him on the phone this very morning?

 

“Come on up,” she says, and he hears the click of the lock disengaging.

 

The lobby and elevator are just as clean and nice as the outside of the building, and he stares at the bag in his hands, avoiding meeting his own gaze in the elevator mirror until the chime indicates he’s made it to the seventh floor. He walks down the hall until he finds her apartment number and knocks.

 

He hears her footsteps coming and he loves the sound of the cadence of her step—he could pick out her walk blindfolded—and suddenly the door is opening and they’re standing face to face for the first time in a week.

 

“Hi,” she says, a smile spreading across her face. “You brought me food.”

 

He smiles back, unable to resist. “I did indeed.”

 

She reaches for the bag and takes it from him, and then she continues to stare at him, and he knows that she’s been thinking, because the traces of the line between her eyebrows are there.

 

He stares back, unsure of what to do, until she sets the bag on the floor all of a sudden and reaches for him, pulling him down for a kiss. He’s happy to meet her in this, because he’s missed the taste of her so much, and they kiss in her doorway until he breaks apart finally because she tastes amazing but really, he’s still in the hallway.

 

“I missed you,” he says.

 

“I missed you too,” she replies, and she realizes that he’s still standing at the hallway and blushes as she reaches down to pick up the bag again. “Hey, um, come on in. This is… this is my place.”

 

**

 

Clarke’s heart is beating like crazy because she finally got to kiss Bellamy again after a week apart and it felt amazing. But also he is _here_ , inside her apartment, and she’s suddenly self-conscious as hell because this is intimacy on a level she’s been trying to avoid for years, and yeah, _grow up Clarke_ , but she tells herself it’s okay to freak out a little bit.

 

She beckons for him to follow her inside, looking back as she heads into the kitchen, and she sees him looking around, eyes wide as he takes in her world, ever the archaeologist. She wonders what he interprets about her based on her material possessions. She has art on her walls, nothing fancy, but she’s proud of the small collection she’s begun, mostly from local artists whose work she’s admired in coffee shops and cafes. Her furniture is simple, clean lines but still comfortable, and the open layout of the living and dining area leads to a balcony facing west. It’s nothing fancy, but she finds herself wanting him to like it.

 

“So…” he says, and she can tell that he’s nervous too, and she feels weirdly relieved that she’s not alone in this.

 

“So,” she says. “Here we are.”

 

She heads into the kitchen, which is really just another part of the large main room, separated by a counter. She begins unpacking the food from the bag and laying it out on said counter, because she needs something to do with her hands.

 

“How was the flight?” he asks.

 

She shrugs. “The Toronto-to-Vancouver leg always sucks. It’s nice to be home.”

 

He walks over to where she’s pulling some plates out of the cupboard.

 

“Can I help?”

 

“No, you brought the food, you’re exempt from chores for the duration of the meal,” she replies.

 

He smiles, his dimples killing her as usual. God, he is so handsome, it’s not fair.

 

“House rules?”

 

She scrunches her nose. “Not really. I don’t really have people over here much, so rules aren’t really a thing. I guess that could be a rule, though. It makes sense, right?”

 

Bellamy nods. “Octavia and I have something similar. Rules are good when you’re sharing space, cuts down on conflict.”

 

Clarke begins to make up a plate of food and motions for him to follow her. “How is it being back in your place again after the summer?”

 

He shrugs. “It’s fine. Same old East Van apartment building. I’ve been spending most of my time in the lab on campus, really.”

 

They take their food into the living room and set their plates on the table, and Bellamy is caught up again, looking at her things.

 

“I’m so hungry, I have to eat this now,” Clarke says as she begins to scarf down her food. Bellamy has walked over to the bookcase, and she thinks of their silly bet—the lists of books they’ve guessed for each other are written down and sealed in an envelope in care of Octavia, which seems a bit over the top, but then again they’ve take their wagers seriously since the first summer they met. Some things never change, no matter how head-over-heels you are. She is chewing on a bite of butter chicken—it is absolute _bliss_ to be reunited with her favorite Indian food again—when she notices a change in his stance, and she remembers what else is on that bookshelf.

 

Photographs. A few of them, in frames. There’s one of her and Raven, one of her with her parents when she was small, one of her with Octavia and some other students at L’Arche from a few years ago, and one of her with Wells, taken the summer before he passed away.

 

She gets up and walks over to Bellamy and he turns to look at her, a question in his eyes.

 

“Yeah,” she answers. “That’s me and Wells. I like to have a picture of him around.”

 

Bellamy nods. “Of course,” he says, and she wonders, suddenly, what it’s like to be a girl’s first real boyfriend after her last boyfriend died.

 

He is looking at her, and she can tell by his expression that he knows she’s thinking—he says her mind _spins_ —but she can tell that his mind is spinning, too.

 

“Clarke, are you…” he begins, and then falters, and she is unsure where he’s going. He clears his throat and starts again. “Is this weird for you? Me being here?”

 

Not what she expected. Her eyebrows rise. “You mean here in my apartment?  


“Yeah,” he says, and he’s concerned, and of course he’s been picking up on her body language and her energy since he got here because he can read her like a fucking book.

 

She laces her fingers together. “Well, not really, but… kind of?” He looks hurt, so she reaches out and grabs his forearm to reassure him. “I want you here! Please don’t worry, Bellamy, I want you here. I definitely want you here. I’ve just never actually had a guy here before.”

 

Now it’s his turn to raise his eyebrows.

 

She laughs, because now that she’s said it, it sounds kind of silly. “You’re the first... lover I’ve ever had in this apartment, okay?”

 

A smile spreads across his face. “That’s fine with me,” he says.

 

“It’s not that I haven’t had people in my life,” she continues, and his smile vanishes. She chuckles indulgently at him and slides her hand down to interlace her fingers with his. “Don’t be jealous, you know you’re the only one for me now.”

 

He looks slightly mollified, and continues his line of inquiry. “But this is weird for you.”

 

She tugs at his hand and brings him back to the table so they can sit and eat. She wants to have a least a little more food inside her, if this is going in the direction she suspects it is.

 

“It’s just different,” she says. “It kind of hit me, really, on the train into the city earlier, that things here are going to be really different now, because of… us. And bringing you here for the first time, it feels like it’s some kind of symbolic, I don’t know, event or something.” She still gets shy when she talks about them as a couple, and she’s also terrible at having these kinds of conversations in general, so she’s not surprised when she feels herself blushing.

 

Bellamy chews thoughtfully for a moment, watching her. “Things are going to be different,” he says after he’s swallowed. “But as far as I’m concerned, things are only going to change for the better.”

 

“I agree,” Clarke says. “But I’m not good at change, even the positive kind.”

 

She notices his lips quirking. He knows this about her.

 

“There are just all these… _things_ to think about it,” she continues. “It was so easy at L’Arche.”

 

Bellamy smiles. “I know. We were spoiled there.”

 

“You know what I mean?”

 

“Of course,” he says, reaching for her hand. “Clarke, I don’t want this to be stressful for you. It’s different, but we’ll figure it out.”

 

She squeezes his hand, because Bellamy is being the definition of supportive, as always, even when she can’t turn her brain off and just be.

 

“If I had my way, I would still get to spend every minute with you, but we both know that’s not realistic,” he continues. “And maybe it’s not a bad idea to take some of this slow.”

 

Her face quirks in confusion. “Slow?”

 

He shrugs. “This… us… this is something that’s been years in the making, for sure. But really, we’ve only officially been together for thirty-seven days. So it’s okay if we don’t have it all figured out just yet.”

 

“Thirty-seven days?” she asks, amazed that he’s been counting. And then she thinks _of course he’s been counting_. It’s his turn to blush slightly.

 

“The cave-in was on the fifteenth, so…” he explains, and she rises out of her chair, walks over to where he’s still sitting, and pulls his head to her chest so she can plant a kiss on the top of his hair. His hands go around her middle and they really hold each other for the first time since they’ve been reunited.

 

“I love you,” she whispers into his hair, amazed as she is every time she says it by how freeing it feels. How right. The tension in her body fades as it remembers _this_.

 

“I love you too,” he says, nipping at her shirt playfully, and she’s suddenly very aware of her newly made bed in the other room.

 

He pulls back slightly. “Listen, Clarke. I was thinking on the way over here. I know that this is all really new, and I’m serious about taking some things slow if you want to. And I know that you have your ways you’ve always done things. So if you don’t want me to stay over tonight, I completely understand. Because I—“

 

She tilts his head back then, stopping him from talking as she forces him to meet her eyes. “Are you serious right now?” she laughs, and the look on his face is priceless.

 

“What’s so funny?” he asks.

 

“We haven’t seen each other in a week. I will kick your _ass_ if you go back to your apartment tonight,” she says.

 

His serious expression is replaced by a wide grin, and he moves his chair out slightly, using his hands to pull her into place astride his lap, his arms circling around her torso lightly. “I was hoping you would say that, but I didn’t want to assume.”

 

She runs her hand down the side of his face until she cups his chin, her thumb grazing over the dimple. “I won’t lie to you. I’m still scared shitless by all of this. But I’m willing to go for it, one hundred percent, if you are.”

 

His hands slide up her back and he pulls her closer. “You know I am,” he says, and then he’s kissing her again, and it’s the most beautiful, normal thing in the world, to be kissing her boyfriend in her dining room after he brought her dinner.

 

She’s scared shitless, but she could get used to this.

 

**

 

Bellamy has to force Clarke to let him do the dishes after they eat—no house rules? Only children are so weird—and she finally relents and says she wouldn’t mind grabbing a shower after traveling all day. This gives Bellamy some time to force his mind from careening too far into the future, which is all it wants to do now that they’re talking about what happens next.

 

Even though he’s just promised Clarke that they can take it slow. Thirty-seven days. That’s it. It’s a lifetime and a millisecond, depending on what scale you use. Of course, that’s putting a number on something that is actually very difficult to measure. He’s always found the concept of timekeeping in relationships to be strange, because how do you really know, exactly, when something starts?

 

He needs a number, though, to keep himself in check. Because when it was only thirty-seven days, it was much easier to shut down thoughts of what it would be like to live with her—would they move into one of their places, or get a new place? See? That’s a crazy question to ask after only thirty-seven days. When it was only thirty-seven days, it was much easier to kick himself before he imagined what their kids would look like, _for example_ , he thinks as he fumbles some silverware in the sink. _Get it together, dumbass_.

 

He’s sitting on the couch reading an old issue of _The New Yorker_ he found on her coffee table when she comes out of her bedroom, her hair in damp waves on her shoulders. She’s changed into a soft cotton dress he’s never seen before, but he recognizes it as the kind of style she likes to wear when she’s relaxing at the end of a long day.

 

She joins him on the couch, folding her legs underneath a light blanket to protect them from the chill of the rainy evening.

 

“It’s never as hot here in the summer as it is in France,” she says. “We had hot summers where I grew up, too. I don’t know if the weather here will ever feel completely normal.”

 

Her comment jogs his memory. “How was your visit with your mom?”

 

She stiffens slightly and he starts to regret the question, but then decides that no, he doesn’t regret it. He needs to know how it went, otherwise he’ll keep worrying about it.

 

“It was… very typical in a lot of ways,” she says. “We lunched at the club, went to a few dinners with her friends.”

 

“You just used ‘lunch’ as a verb,” he teases.

 

She rolls her eyes. “You’ll see,” she says.

 

He turns to face her. “I’ll see?”

 

She looks down at her lap, and then casts her glance over her shoulder for a second, towards the bookcase. Towards the photograph of herself and Wells. The love he felt for her when he first saw that picture—of her looking so young and so happy—sweeps over him again.

 

She looks back at him, a shyness in her eyes. “My mom and I, we—we finally talked again, last night, about the opening reception for the building they’re naming after Wells.”

 

“How’d it go?” he asks, his mind flashing back to that night in June when he’d interrupted a Skype conversation about this very topic.

 

Clarke swallowed. “It went… better than I thought it would go? I don’t know. I put off talking about it for as long as possible, but then I was going through some things in my old bedroom, and I found some old photos of me and Wells from when we were kids, and it just made all the fighting with mom about it seem so stupid. I think the fact that they’re having the reception on that day is really… I don’t know, it just makes me uncomfortable. But them naming the building after him… I like that. I really like that, a lot. Because people will say his name. His name will be in people’s minds when they think of that place, and it’s just a building name, but… it’s good that his name will be spoken again.”

 

Her lip trembles then and suddenly her face crumples as she tears up, and his arms are reaching for her immediately, pulling her to him until she’s lying against his chest, his hand stroking her hair as she just cries for a little while.

 

“It’s good because he’ll be remembered again,” she says into his shirt, and he kisses the top of her head as he holds her. She sniffles and leans back until she can see his face again, takes a breath. “So I thought about what my mother and Thelonius asked, and decided that not doing it just to piss them off would be childish. It would be a stupid reason to avoid something that’s being done in Wells’ honor. His memory deserves better than that.”

 

He’s gazing at her, watching her be strong again, watching her dig deep, biting her lip as she weighs what she’s going to say next.

 

“Will you come with me?” she asks suddenly, her eyes wide. His hand stills in her hair. “To the reception, I mean,” she continues. “To where I grew up. I haven’t given them an official ‘yes’ yet, but… I want to do it. And I realized that if I’m going to do it, it would be much, much better if I had you there with me.”

 

She is reading his face, trying to anticipate his reaction, and she gets ahead of herself. “I know the first week of September is insane with school getting started and everything. So I totally get it if you can’t come because—“

 

“Of course I’ll come with you,” he says, shaking his head to get to her stop voicing her doubts. “Of course I’ll be there for you.”

 

Her lip trembles again but this time with a smile. “Really?” she asks, and he nods, and she leans up to kiss him.

 

His heart is soaring. He lets her get one kiss in before he cradles her face in his hands so he can look into her eyes. “Really. You’re—you’re such a good person, Clarke. You’re willing to do something difficult, something that makes you uncomfortable, to honor the memory of Wells. That’s amazing. And the fact that you want me to be there with you, that’s… I’m so glad I can be that person for you.”

 

“Thank you” she whispers, leaning her cheek into his hand. “Thank you for being so patient with me, for being open to this. I always swore to myself I would keep his memory alive, and I guess part of that meant I didn’t want to let anybody else in, because how do you explain that to someone? I lost my best friend and I don’t want to forget him? That’s not a great conversation to have on a date.”

 

Bellamy strokes his thumb across her cheek. “We’ll keep it alive, Clarke. I never knew him, but it’s clear as day that he’s a part of you, that he will always be a part of you. And I love every part of you.”

 

She slides her hands up his chest until she links her hands behind his neck. “Where did you come from?” she asks, and she laughs the way she laughs when she gets overcome with happiness, and he thanks the stars above again that he can make her feel this way.

 

“I got out of a car one day at some random farmhouse in France and there you were,” he jokes.

 

She scratches the nape of his neck and laughs again. “Thank god,” she replies, and then she pulls him in for another kiss, and this time it’s on, desire coursing through his veins because this kiss is laced with need.

 

She throws her leg across his lap again and the kiss garners more heat. His hands run over her back and soon she’s ducking down to kiss his neck. He slides his hands further down until they reach the hem of her dress, which is already pushed partially up her thighs. He digs his fingers into the soft skin of her legs and feels her muscles flexing, and he _wants_ her, so badly, wondering not for the first time if he can ever possibly get enough of her.

 

He slides his hands up until he reaches her hips, his fingers sliding over her ass underneath her dress, causing her to purr into his neck, and then she is pulling away so she can see his eyes.

 

“Are you ready to check out my bed?” she asks wickedly, leaning against him in a way that hits just the right spot.

 

He digs his fingers into her flesh, his hips bucking up slightly. “You have no idea how ready.”

 

She holds his gaze as she slides off his lap and pulls him up from the couch, then turns to lead him to her bedroom by the hand. The first thing he notices is that her bed is huge. One small blonde should not need such a large bed. And yet he knows that a bed, for Clarke, is a special place, an important place. He’d teased her back in France about how he was going to have to test this one out and see how it compared to the bed at L’Arche, but really, he has been curious to see what her bed here is like.

 

This one is bigger, that’s for sure. And it has more pillows. The bedspread is a soft grey, against sheets of a light seafoam green, and he hasn’t even been in it yet but he already knows it’s infinitely more comfortable than his own bed because that’s how it was at L’Arche and that’s how it’ll be here, too.

 

She turns back to him, smiling, and pulls him toward her as she backs up against the bed. He leans down to kiss her and their arms slide around each other until he is lowering her down to the mattress, laying her there gently as he braces himself over her. He kisses her deeply, and the mewl in the back of her throat both satisfies the hell out of him and makes him crave more.

 

Her leg hooks up around his waist to pull him closer and her dress falls down to her hips, his hand diving to caress her skin and tease the edge of her underwear, his fingers hooking into the elastic. Her hands are pushing up his shirt and he pauses to straighten so he can tug it upwards and off with his free hand. Her hands fall to his belt and she’s undoing everything, her capable fingers making quick work of it. Her fingers slide into his underwear and he lets his head fall back for a moment of appreciation because it’s been _too long_.

 

He shucks it all off then until he’s naked over her. Her dress is pooled at her waist, and he reaches to slide her underwear down her legs, leaning down to kiss her beneath her ear.

 

“I like your dress,” he whispers, and she shivers at the contact of his breath and his lips against her skin, a grin spreading across her face.

 

“I thought you might,” she says huskily.

 

He rears back so he can reach for the straps of the dress and pushes them down until they’re free of her arms, and he shoves the thing down to her waist so her breasts are finally liberated from the stretchy cotton. He palms them with his hands and smirks down at her because he is just the luckiest motherfucker in the world. He has _her_.

 

Her hands slide over his and she pushes one downward until he knows what’s she’s asking for. He finds her wet for him already, and his slides a finger inside of her as his thumb plays across her clit, her voice breaking slightly as she moans and her hips rise.

 

He leans down to kiss her again while continuing to use his hand to pleasure her, and his other hand anchors next to her shoulder, his fingers catching the ends of her hair. Their tongues battle and she’s moaning into his mouth when she breaks the kiss and he trails over to her neck, her collarbone, down to her breast, sucking the nipple into his mouth.

 

“Fuck, Bellamy,” she cries out as he bites her just enough to cause a twinge of pain he knows she likes right as he crooks his fingers inside her. He smiles against her breast as she shudders and then her fingers are in his hair, pulling his face up so she can see him. “I need you,” she says, her other had skating down over his torso until she’s wrapping her fingers around him where he’s hard and ready.

 

He’s happy to oblige because he needs her too, and _badly_. He pulls his fingers out and positions himself so he can thrust into her, the feeling of finally being inside her again nearly overtaking him. He feels like he’s on top of the world in that moment, looking down as she arches her back and screams in pleasure, her breasts moving with his thrusts, her dress bunched at her waist, sexy as hell. His hands glide up her legs as they begin to move together, and he leans down finally to kiss her again.

 

“God, you feel so good,” she groans, and he smiles against her lips.

 

“So do you,” he says, and he feels her clench slightly around him as he changes the angle.

 

They’ve made an admirable attempt to fuck each in every position possible over the past thirty-seven—soon to be thirty-eight—days, but when it comes down to it, when they’re both just ready to be as close as they can possibly be to each other, they end up like this, and every time it overwhelms him. Because sex with Clarke is more than just sex, and this position in particular makes him feel they are _one_.

 

He rests his forehead against hers for a moment and just feels, their breaths intermingling, and then he begins to pick up the pace, because she is rotating her hips up and against him and he knows what she likes when she does that, what she’s seeking. He sinks into her again and again and her hands slide over her breasts, holding them and pinching her nipples as they bounce with his thrusts, and he feels her heat intensify. She is close, really close, and he thrusts into her a few more times, grinding against her clit just so, until she clamps down around him, her muscles going off inside her, her eyes closed and then flying open, seeking him.

 

“I fucking love feeling you come,” he says, and she’s laughing because she can’t form words right now, her orgasm fading out but her hips still moving as he swells inside her, getting closer to his own edge.

 

“I want to feel you come, too,” she rasps, and her voice is it for him as he thrusts, the tightening increasing until it snaps and he is coming inside her, sweet relief flooding his body with every pulse. He doesn’t break eye contact with her until he feels it fading and he can’t really hold his head up anymore, her hands sliding over his backside and up into his hair as she whispers incomplete thoughts into his ear.

 

He falls down onto his side soon after, and she tilts onto her side next to him, her hand across his chest, and she leans over to kiss him on the pectoral as he makes his way onto his back, his breath still coming hard.

 

“So what do you think of the bed?” she asks after a few moments, and he laughs, his breath still not quite back to normal.

 

“I think it passes the first test,” he says, and he reaches for her and pulls her to him until she’s cradled against his chest.

 

“The first test?” she asks, and he can hear her smile.

 

“I’ve only evaluated one category so far,” he says, and this time he can feel her laugh.

 

“Oh yeah?”

 

“Yeah. I need to make sure it’s good for sleeping, too.”

 

She kisses him on the chest again and snuggles in closer.

 

“Be my guest.”

 

**

 

Clarke wakes early the next morning, her body clock still thinking it’s partially on the East Coast and partially in France, and finds herself in the position she’s grown used to waking up in: comfortably tangled up in her blankets, touching Bellamy somewhere. She fell asleep on him the night before, but they moved in their sleep like they always do, nesting into the covers—that’s one thing they definitely have in common, their love of a good night’s sleep. And yet some part of her always seems to need to maintain contact with him, even subconsciously.

 

This time when she wakes, her hand is trapped underneath his bicep where it’s against the mattress, and she lets her fingers linger as she wakes and slides her hand free, yawning as the morning light finds its way into her eyes. She turns onto her side and watches him there, asleep, his skin dusky against the softness of her sheets, his face half buried in a pillow.

 

Sleeping Bellamy is one of her favorite versions of him. He’s innocent in his sleep in a way that he rarely lets anyone see when he’s awake. His tough guy act—which she has come to learn is rooted in his childhood (which wasn’t easy) and in a lifetime of protecting his mother and sister—is something that he’ll never let go of completely. And she’s fine with that, even when he uses it to wind her up, because it’s part of him.

 

Her heart warms as she thinks of his words from the night before. _I love every part of you._ She remembers this sentiment in general being a turning point for her with him, can pinpoint the exact moment when she realized that he really did love her, in spite of everything. Because she has a lot of things she’s still processing, still working through, and a part of that process for her has been a whole lot of self-doubt and feeling like she’s defective as a person. She’s working to get away from that, but it still eats away at her at times. So his love of every part of her means more than she knows how to articulate.

 

She leans over and kisses his bicep before slipping out of the bed, pulling on a t-shirt and leggings, and heading for the kitchen, because coffee. She needs coffee.

 

She has filled the kettle and flicked it on and is about to grind the beans when he wanders in after her, his hair disheveled from sleep.

 

“You didn’t have to wake up with me,” she says.

 

He walks over to her and pulls her in for a kiss, and she feels that spark in her stomach that she always feels with him, when he kisses her.

 

“I know,” he says. “But I wanted to.”

 

She looks down at the coffee grinder, suddenly aware of the domestic nature of the scene in front of them. “I haven’t made my own coffee in so long,” she remarks. “It was months of mess hall coffee and then my mom has one of those stupid Keurig things that creates mountains of trash. So it’s been a while. This first batch might be a bit rough.”

 

“Will it have caffeine it in? That’s all that matters.”

 

She picks up the bag of coffee, which she had retrieved from her freezer, mercifully preserved over her summer away so she doesn’t have to go out to the store. “This is my favorite kind.”

 

He takes the bag and inspects it as she goes back to the small appliance in front of her. “And this is the grinder. I put in enough beans to reach this line,” she says, pointing to the side, and then realization hits her. “Although I guess with you here, I’ll have to double it. At least.”

 

She takes the bag back from him and pours more beans into the grinder. His hand rests on the small of her back as he watches.

 

“I grind it for this long,” she says, and then hits the button, the high-pitched noise causing them both to jump slightly.

 

“The French press is in that cupboard,” she says when she’s done grinding the beans. “Do you mind grabbing it?”

 

He reaches up to do this and she watches him with a slight smile on her face—he’s in nothing but his underwear—as he comes back to her with the French press in hand. She pours the ground-up coffee into the French press and they wait for the kettle to finish.

 

“I count to twenty after it flicks off, because that’s supposed to be the ideal temperature for water when you’re making French press coffee,” she says, and soon she’s counting and then pouring the water over the beans.

 

“Now what?” he asks, the smirk on his face indicating that he’s perfectly aware of how to make French press coffee, he’s just indulging her.

 

“Now we wait three to four excruciating minutes until it’s ready.”

 

“Do you have a timer?”

 

She shrugs. “I just kind of guess.”

 

He leans down to kiss her again, this time on the cheek, and he tucks a lock of hair behind her ear.

 

“Sounds an awful lot like a set of house rules,” he jokes.

 

She laughs. “More like coffee rules. Can you live by them?”

 

He nods. “Absolutely. Like I said, if there’s caffeine in it, I’m happy.”

 

A few minutes later, they’ve got their coffee and Clarke decides she wants to enjoy it on the balcony. The rain from the night before has cleared and the view over the water and the mountains shows a misty morning gradually becoming sunnier and sunnier.

 

“It’s going to be a good day,” she says, the breeze stirring her hair as she looks over at him.

 

“You think so?” he asks. She’s wrapped him up in the blanket from the couch so he doesn’t get cold in the morning air.

 

She nods. “Yeah, I do.”

 

He drinks his coffee and watches her. “What makes you think so?”

 

She looks back at him for a moment, takes in his face and then all of him, and he is so wonderfully present, so _here_ , and it’s crazy and new and real.

 

She reaches for his hand and says, “Because, scared shitless or not, today is the first day of the rest of our lives.”

 

And she’s more than okay with that.

 

_Fin_

 

 


End file.
